


Il Adore

by halfwit



Series: In Sickness and In Health [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bring some tissues, F/M, M/M, Protective Castiel, Sad, Sad Castiel, Sad Sam, Sick Dean Winchester, Sick Fic, Supportive Gabriel, cancer fic, doctor benny, hospital fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwit/pseuds/halfwit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is working late at his office on a project when he gets an unwelcome phone call that could change his life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Il Adore

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry.

Castiel removes his black horn-rimmed glasses and carelessly tosses them onto his desk. He closes his eyes and sighs deeply, bringing a hand up to the bridge of his nose to try to relieve some of the pressure from where his glasses bit in to the sensitive skin. This project was murder on him.

Blearily opening his eyes, the blue-eyed man glanced at his favorite photo – one of him and Dean on their wedding day. It was a simple, candid shot. They had been sharing a laugh before going to cut the cake, and Ellen snapped the picture: To Castiel they looked so in love and at peace and he loved that reminder with him whenever he was at work – it made the tedium of his job much more bearable.

Inhaling deeply to clear his mind, Castiel started to click away at his keyboard. The sooner he finished these projected figures for his boss, the sooner he could get home to Dean. The two men hadn’t been able to see each other as much as they would like after returning from their holiday at Great Wolf Lodge. Castiel got sucked in to this project, which could cement his position at the accounting firm and give him a promotion; and Dean, between his chemotherapy treatments and his stubbornness to continue with his residency, the green-eyed man had practically been a ghost. If not for little notes and whispered kisses, Castiel might forget the other man shared the home with him.

Shaking his head to dispel the troubling thoughts, the raven-haired man tried to get lost in his numbers again. It wasn’t long before he felt the buzzing of his cell phone, an annoyance to his concentration. He tried to ignore it, hoping it would go to voice mail. He knew Dean wouldn’t bother him, not with the deadline fast approaching, and nothing else could be that important. Picking up where he was, Castiel just started to get back into the Excel formula when his desk phone began ringing – the noise startlingly loud in the otherwise deserted office.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Castiel shouted, annoyed at the disruption. He wanted to ignore the call, but had a feeling whoever was calling wasn’t going to leave him alone.

“Novak,” he growled into the phone. “What the hell…”

“C-C-Castiel?” came the hesitant, broken sounding voice on the other end. That was Ellen. She sounded so weak and scared; Ellen was never weak. She was never scared. Castiel’s heart immediately plummeted to his stomach and he felt cold, like all the warmth had suddenly been leeched from his body. He wanted to stand up, he wanted to sit down, he wanted to know what was wrong, but at the same time not knowing was good, too.

“Ellen?” he queried, hoping he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t his mother-in-law. Of course it wasn’t, he just had been working too hard.

“Sweetie,” she said, voice sounding somewhat stronger. “I need you to listen to me.”

“Ellen, what’s the matter, you’re scaring me,” Castiel said, noticing the slight tremor that entered his voice, making him sound more like he had at seventeen, rather than the man he was at twenty-seven.

“You need to come down to the hospital,” she replied. Distantly Castiel realized she was forcing strength behind her voice to keep him grounded; but, why would she need him to be strong.

“What’s the matter?” the dark-haired man asked, running a hand haphazardly through his already mussed locks. “Is Bobby okay? Has something happened to Sam? Are you okay?” That’s all that could be wrong…he couldn’t even entertain anything being wrong with the one person he omitted from his list.

“It’s Dean,” Ellen said, blunt and to the point as always. “He collapsed in the middle of his shift. Benny says it doesn’t look good.”

When asked later, Castiel wouldn’t be able to say how he made it to the hospital. He didn’t remember hanging up the phone after Ellen told him Dean was sick. He didn’t remember whether or not he saved his damn spreadsheet. He didn’t remember getting into his car and driving the twenty minutes to the hospital. Everything seemed surreal. Of course it was surreal, Castiel thought vaguely. This is just a nightmare – like that one time he thought Dean had committed suicide. It wasn’t real. Any moment he was going to wake up. He was going to take some more vacation days, and get his husband to take some as well. This was just his subconscious’ idea of a sick joke. Any moment now he was going to wake up.

Instead of breaking the surface of a dream, Castiel found himself engulfed in a moose-sized hug from his brother-in-law. Why was Sam in his dream? Sam should be two hours away at Stanford, not standing in the middle of a hospital in Castiel’s twisted imagination. Quickly finding himself needing to breathe, Castiel extricated himself from Sam’s too tight grasp.

“What are you doing here, Sam?” Castiel asked, voice sounding rougher to his own ears and coming as though from a great distance. “Shouldn’t you be at school? Dean won’t be very happy to hear that you aren’t taking your studies seriously.”

Sam stepped back and looked at his brother-in-law as though he had grown another head, a puzzled crease forming between his brows, making the younger man look far more serious than his years.

“Cas? What are you talking about?” Sam asked, reaching a hand out to steady his friend. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Castiel replied, waving a hand dismissively. “I just don’t quite understand why you are here.”

“Castiel, this is my brother, where the hell else would I be?” Sam asked, anger starting to color his tone.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Castiel muttered, more to himself than to the tall man now walking beside him down the corridor. “Why are you in my hallucination?”

“Your wh-what?” Sam stuttered, steps faltering and then coming to an abrupt halt. He reached out an extra-long arm and stopped Castiel’s forward motion as well.

“This is just a hallucination,” Castiel said, convinced that nothing he was seeing was real. “Dean is at home in our bed beside me, and my overactive imagination is just playing on my worst fears. You know this is exactly what I have been most afraid of ever since he first told me of the relapse.

“Each night when I close my eyes, I am so afraid to fall asleep, because I am afraid that my mind is going to make me see him lying in a hospital bed dying. It wouldn’t be the first time, it happened when we were in high school, too. It’s just with working so much, I’ve finally reached my breaking point and my brain is having fun with me. I just need to find a way to wake up.”

Looking into Sam’s hazel eyes, Castiel can see them swimming with tears and with something that too closely resembles pity. All of a sudden, he knows. This isn’t a fucking dream – it’s his worst nightmare come to life.

His legs aren’t strong enough for some reason, they don’t seem able to support his weight, and he feels off-kilter as he sinks to the ground, Sam’s sturdy frame coming to rest beside him.

“Shhh,” Sam said, trying to give comfort to the older man. “It’s okay Cas. Really, it’ll be fine. You know my big brother, he can be a major drama queen at times. This is just one of those times. We probably weren’t all paying enough attention to him, and he decided to make sure we all noticed him.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Castiel’s chest, but it didn’t come out as a laugh, he came out as a ragged, jagged sob – wrenched deep from his soul. He didn’t even feel the tears building before they were pouring down his face and clogging his throat with his sorrow.

“I. Don’t. Under-under-understand,” he choked out after several minutes.

“Come on, buddy,” Sam said, tears streaking down his own face. For the first time, Castiel noticed how haggard the younger man looked; his eyes red rimmed with deep shadows purple smudges underneath. Angrily swiping at the rogue tears, Castiel tried to pull himself together. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. He needed to know what was going on – be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Staggering to his feet, Castiel pulled Sam up as well, and started back to the emergency room, where Sam first came from. The duo didn’t make it far before the doors swung open to reveal Dr. Lafitte coming toward them, Bobby and Ellen trailing behind.

If Castiel didn’t already realize how serious the situation, looking at Ellen’s ashen complexion and Bobby’s reddened eyes made it crystal clear.

“Benny, where is my Dean?” Castiel asked without preamble, anxious to see his husband with his own eyes and talk to him.

“Sit down, brotha,” Benny said, voice a gentle rumble as he place a meaty hand against Castiel’s shoulder.

Not wanting to be molly-coddled, Castiel shrugged off the placating gesture and straightened to his full height, his fiery blue eyes boring into the doctor’s cooler ones.

“I’m not your fucking brother,” Castiel snapped, patience long since exhausted. “I get a frantic phone call from my mother-in-law telling me that my husband collapsed at work and is in the emergency room, I don’t want to hear any medical mumbo jumbo or fancy sounding jargon. I want to see my husband and talk to him.”

“You can’t do that, Castiel,” Benny said, the authoritative tone of doctor lacing his voice, replacing that of a friend.

“And why the hell not?” Castiel demanded coldly.

“Because he’s in a coma,” came the harsh reply.

Castiel’s world tilted on its axis and then went completely dark.

There were so many unfamiliar sounds around him that were trying to penetrate the peaceful darkness of his slumber. Castiel heard unfamiliar voices and some that were familiar, too. He knew he should fight to wake up, but something kept him tethered to where he was. He wanted to resist consciousness, he knew there was something he wanted to hide from, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was. Here he didn’t have to face anything. Here he could just float along the current of blackness, nothingness. Here he could be lazy, just like he and Dean floated on the lazy river during their vacation.

Dean!

The sudden thought of his husband had the blue-eyed man’s eyes flying open and a sharp inhalation of breath drawn in to his lungs.

“Easy there, kiddo,” a whiskey-rough voice rumbled near his ear, followed by the firm, grounding presence of a hand. “Take it easy, Cassie.”

“Gabriel!” Castiel practically sobbed, turning to face his older brother. “What? How? When? I don’t understand.”

“You gotta calm down, little brother, or else they’re going to remove you from the hospital, and I don’t think you want that,” Gabriel cautioned, seeing how agitated the other man was becoming just moments after regaining consciousness.

Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Castiel tried to make sense of what was going on. He remembered getting to the hospital and then hearing that Dean wasn’t conscious.

“Where is Dean?” Castiel asked, voice breaking in his distress.

In an un-Gabriel gesture, the older man grabbed Castiel’s hand, and squeezed for a moment before letting go and standing up to pace.

“I promise I will tell you everything that I know,” Gabriel began, putting up a hand to stop Castiel from interrupting him. “You have to let me tell you everything and then I will take you to see Dean, if you still want to see him.”

Castiel glared at his brother, his expression clearly saying that seeing Dean was the most important thing in his life at that moment.

“Okay, okay, Mr. Cranky Pants,” Gabriel said, trying for his normal snark, but falling short. For all his cockiness and bluster, Gabriel cared deeply for his family, and that family included his brother-in-law. For Gabriel to be thrown off his game, Castiel knew things were as bad as he originally feared.

“Your husband is an idiot,” Gabriel began, holding up a hand to stop Castiel from defending the green-eyed man’s honor. “You aren’t allowed to stand up for him until you hear the whole story. If at the end you believe I am too harsh in my assessment, you can challenge me to a duel at dawn; in the meantime, if I may continue? Wonderful.

“As I was saying, your husband is an idiot,” the shorter man repeated, ignoring the death glare from his younger brother. “He has been taking double shifts at the hospital, and apparently hasn’t been feeling well, saying he was coming down with a cold, but that it wasn’t anything serious. Dr. Lafitte wanted to keep an eye on him because of the chemotherapy compromising his immune system, but every time he asked Dean-O about it, Dean just said he was fine, tired, but fine.

“Today, Dean was in the Children’s Ward checking on some of the patients, and the kids said one minute he was laughing and reading a story to some of the youngsters, and the next all the blood drained from his face and he fell on to the floor and started to shake in convulsions. One of the older kids pushed their call button for the nurse. By the time the nurse arrived, Dean’s eyes were rolled back in to his head and there was blood and vomit trickling from his mouth that was choking him. The nurse called for Dr. Lafitte and she rolled Dean on to his side and cleared his airway so he could get some air. The seizure lasted for almost two minutes – no one has said how, or if, an episode of that length and strength will harm Dean’s long-term brain functions.”

Gabriel took a breath, trying to compose himself. He knew this had to be a gut-punch to Castiel to hear how badly his husband was doing, but there was still more to come. The older brother in him wanted to protect Castiel from the truth, but he knew it was kinder to be upfront with everything now rather than the other man to learn the truth later.

“They got Dean to the emergency room and then moved to the Critical Care Unit. Cassie, I’m not going to lie, things aren’t good. Dean’s temperature is above 105 degrees and the strongest antibiotics they have him on aren’t reducing the fever fast enough. He is in a medically induced coma and is not breathing on his own. When you see him, he has wires coming out of everywhere. He doesn’t look like Dean.”

On this Gabriel’s voice cracked. He was trying so hard to be strong for his brother, but to see his friend in this condition was heart-breaking. To see your spouse in this condition was going to be devastating.

“Gabriel,” Castiel interrupted, standing unsteadily from his bed. “I need to see him. Please. God, please take me to him.”

Nodding, with unshed tears in his eyes, Gabriel took his brother’s hand, much like he used to when they were small children facing an unknown. They walked down the cold, sterile hallway to the CCU. The pneumatic doors opened for them, and Castiel found himself staring at yellow scrubs and masks.

“You have to put these on, baby brother,” Gabriel said, tears making his voice thick. “Dean is in a clean room. With the combination of his infection and his compromised immune system, they want us to wash up and put on these monkey suits so we don’t breathe on him or bring anything unsterile into the room on our clothes.”

Castiel found himself moving without thought. Mechanically putting the garish tissue-like material on top of his clothes. At this point he would do whatever he needed to in order to see his husband.

Once appropriately attired, he and Gabriel walked to another set of doors and knocked. A similarly garbed hospital attendant buzzed them into the room, and Castiel felt his heart stop as he saw his Dean for the first time.

This wasn’t the first time he saw his husband sick. Castiel still remembered how fragile his normally indestructible seeming Dean seemed in high school when he first battled cancer. Even now, during this new bout of cancer, Castiel had comforted Dean when the pain got too intense, or when the medications made him retch into the toilet into the wee hours of the morning. Nothing he had seen previously shook his foundation more than this – not even when Dean recovered from his first surgery.

He couldn’t believe this was his husband. This was a skeleton, a shell. His husband’s beautiful, strong soul wasn’t here in this room. Dean was pale, except across his cheeks where the fever burned bright and flushed his skin. His mocha flecked freckles stood out in stark relief against the pallor of his skin. Castiel choked back a sob, and fought the urge to flee the room and pretend none of this happened.

Ever the steady presence, Gabriel gently guided Castiel to an empty chair by Dean’s bedside.

“Sit for a few moments, Cassie,” the older man said, quietly. “Ellen and Bobby went back to the house to rest for a little while and make some phone calls. Sam ran down to get some coffee. Take a few moments with your husband; I’ll be right outside when you need me.”

Before leaving, Gabriel place a gentle kiss against his brother’s cap-covered head. The gesture itself muted by the mask they were forced to wear.

Castiel heard the door close behind him, but he was frozen in a pathetic tableau. Dean was so still. There was minor comfort to be had in the rhythmic beeping from the heart monitor, and the soft whooshing from the ventilator. Those noises meant Dean still was here…at least his body was.

Reaching out a trembling hand, Castiel carefully caught his husband’s hand and held it in a loose grip – afraid to press too tightly for fear of hurting him, or dislodging an important wire.

“Hello Dean,” Castiel said shakily, after a few moments of silence. “It’s Castiel, but I’m sure you probably guessed that already. If you were awake, you probably would be rolling your eyes at me, not that I’d mind. I’d love for you to roll your eyes at me – I’d love for you to do anything at this point.

“You stupid, selfless, suffering idiot,” Castiel bit out, losing the fight against his emotions. “Why didn’t you tell me? You were supposed to tell me everything. You promised me, Dean Winchester. You promised we were in this together, no matter what. I know I have been busy, but I am never too busy for you. You probably didn’t want me to worry about you. How’s that working? Because I’m sure that I’m not worried to death about you right now.”

Castiel stopped his ranting, and lay his head on the bed, bringing Dean’s limp hand up to stroke over his face – pretending that it was his husband who was initiating the caress, and not himself moving the hand like a marionette.

“I can see your freckles so clearly, Dean,” the blue-eyed man started again, trying to come up with a better course of conversation. “You would be so embarrassed because they stand out so clearly. They look like the marks in the connect-the-dots books we used to play with as children. I wonder if I would try to connect them what kind of picture would I end up with?”

There was no reaction from the figure on the bed. Dean’s body was motionless, no flutter to his eyes – further proof he wasn’t sleeping or dreaming – nothing about this was natural, it was artificial, forced, and Castiel felt as though he were being driven slowly insane with this knowledge.

Dean was his rock. Sure, the green-eyed man always said it was Castiel who kept him grounded, and Castiel who was the safe harbor in a storm; but, that was all lies. The truth was that Castiel knew how to be strong, how to be brave because of Dean. He knew no matter what he would always have the honey-brown haired man in his life, his lodestone, and true north. With Dean’s light dimmed, Castiel felt adrift. He knew Dean would want him to keep fighting; to stay strong for Ellen and Bobby and Sam and even for Gabe; but, Castiel had been set adrift. The knowledge for the first time in forever that Castiel could lose Dean set him reeling. He wasn’t prepared for this. They were supposed to grow old together. At the worst case, they should have at least five more years together – that was what Benny had promised them – but that wasn’t taking into consideration the Winchester stubbornness.

“Come on, Dean,” Castiel begged, clutching his husband’s hand tighter, no longer caring about bruises or dislocating wires. He needed Dean to hear him; to feel him. “You son of a bitch! Wake up!”

Castiel knew he was bordering on hysterical. He knew he needed to bring himself under control or else he would be asked to leave, and he didn’t want to leave – but, he wasn’t sure he could stay.

“You listen to me, Dean Winchester,” Castiel growled, sounding like the avenging angel he was named for – the fierce Angel of Thursday. “Here me now. You are going to kick this in the ass. You are going to wake up. Wake up!”

Castiel pulled back, looking at the pale form in front of him and willing Dean to show him a sign – just a little movement.

“Please, Dean,” Castiel choked, sobs finally breaking free as the raven-haired man broke down, his entire world stopping and starting with each beep of a monitor and each whoosh of artificial air. “I love you so much. I love you forever and always.”

Hands shaking, Castiel reached up and gently swept sweat soaked hair out of the way. The shorter man winced when he felt how hot Dean’s forehead was: Gabriel said Dean’s temperature was high, but Castiel didn’t know how someone could survive being so hot.

Dean always was impressed that Castiel had taken Italian in college; he often joked even though Castiel could be insulting him, it still sounded hot. The fact that Dean loved to hear him speak in a foreign language made Castiel brazen to bare his deepest feelings without fear of Dean calling him a girl, like he did in the early days of their relationship. Overwhelmed with emotion and not sure how to express himself, Castiel found the foreign words soothing on his tongue and they were tumbling out before he was fully aware of speaking.

“Ti adoro, amore mio,” Castiel murmured, voice hoarse with emotion and pitched low so only Dean would have been able to hear. “Ti adoro con ogni respiro del mio corpo. Ti adoro con ogni pensiero della mia mente. Ti adoro con ogni fibra della mia anima.”

Closing his eyes against the blinding pain of seeing his husband laid low by illness, Castiel wanted to say more, but nothing else would come in Italian. Tongue feeling thick and slow in his pain, Castiel managed to sob out one more thing, this time in English.

“I love you, sweetheart. Please don’t leave me. Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow.”

“Come on, Cassie,” Gabriel said, appearing as though by magic at his brother’s side, tears streaming unabashedly down his own cheeks. “Let Dean-O rest for a little while.”

Shaking his head, Castiel tried to resist. He couldn’t leave. This was his whole world in this room, he couldn’t leave – no matter how melodramatic that might seem, it was the truth.

“We’ll just wait outside, get some fresh air,” Gabriel soothed, pulling the taller man to a standing position. “Plus, you know Dean, he’ll be tired of all the mother henning and coddling.”

Still struggling against his brother’s ministrations, Castiel rooted himself to the spot.

“Let’s go talk to Benny, ask him to give us the latest on Dean-O’s condition and what we can do, huh? What do you say?”

At the mention of Benny and getting information, the dark-haired man finally capitulated. Castiel felt numb, and allowed himself to be pulled toward the door. Just before he crossed the threshold, he turned back, looking at the still, pale figure on the bed – the shell that usually housed the brilliance of his husband.

“I’ll be back,” Castiel murmured. “Il adore.”

**Author's Note:**

> Are y'all still talking to me? Do you hate me too badly? I won't lie, I cried like a baby while writing it. I did try to warn you that we were going to have some rocky times. I do apologize, too, that I am writing slower than molasses. Things are still up in the air with my mother and finding time and energy to write has been hard. I hope you enjoyed this installment, as much as it is possible to enjoy.  
> Thanks to the wonderful Google Translate for the Italian phrases. Castiel tells Dean, "I love you with every breath in my body. I love you with every thought in my head. I love you with every fiber of my soul."  
> As always, drop me a line and let me know what you think. I love hearing from you. Cheers to all <3!!


End file.
